‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’ was the second and last feature by the Max Fleischer studio.

In almost every aspect, the film is a great improvement on the studio’s first, ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘. Its story is more engaging, its characters are more likable, the animation is of a higher quality, the stylized New York backgrounds are more impressive, the score (by Disney veteran Leigh Harline, of Pinocchio fame) is much more inspired, and the cinematography more interesting.

In a way ‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’ is the inverse of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. Where Gulliver was a human giant in a land of tiny people, Hoppity and his friends are tiny (four-legged) insects in a land of human giants. These humans, all heavily rotoscoped, are faceless giants who seem to have walked straight from a Superman cartoon. Nevertheless, two of the ‘human ones’ (as the insects call us), a songwriter and his wife, become important to plot, as owners of the land the little insects live in. The plot resolves on the insects’ struggle to survive after the fence has been broken, and their houses are being trampled by crossing pedestrians, or set on fire by discarded cigarettes and cigars.

Hoppity, the James Stewart-like hero of the picture, tries to help, but his actions are thwarted by the evil Mr. Beetle (voiced by storyman Ted Pierce) and his helpers Smack the Mosquito and Swat the Fly. The creepy Mr. Beetle has an eye on Honey, the lovely daughter of Mr. Bumble and Hoppity’s love interest. It’s this setting which propels the film forward, and the film only ends when Hoppity and his friends are safe, and he and Honey united in marriage.

The trio of villains is a great improvement on the trio of spies Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’: their interaction is delightful to watch and provides the necessary comic relief. The love story between Hoppity and Honey, of course, is more interesting, too, than that of the bland prince and princess of the earlier film. Unfortunately, Honey remains a terribly bland stock figurine, and has no personality whatsoever of her own. Hoppity is better as the typical optimistic underdog who will fight to the very end, no matter how dire the straits.

The character designs are a little old-fashioned and remain rooted in the cute designs of the second half of the 1930s. Some of the dialogue even is in rhyme, harking back to these more childish days. There’s none of the experimentalism that can be found in the Disney features of the time, including ‘Dumbo‘. The most advanced scene is when Hoppity gets electrified in the nightclub. This accounts for some pretty surreal images.

The cinematography, however, is great overall, and at several times the tiny insects are juxtaposed to the huge world of human hands and feet (a film like ‘Mouse in Manhattan‘ (1945) is by all means tributary to this feature). Because rotoscope is restricted to the faceless humans, who remain in the background, the technique is less irritating than in Gulliver. On the contrary, this feature makes the humans blend within the background of the story that is about insects, after all.

In any way the film is certainly worthy to watch, even though it’s no masterpiece. The songs, for example, by star writers Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser, are unmemorable. Worse, the film retains an awfully relaxed pace without ever reaching real excitement. There are also some plot twists that are hard to swallow: the film’s greatest drama, when Hoppity’s dream garden appears to be less perfect than expected, is very weak and unconvincing. Then we are asked to believe that a sprinkler floods all the insects back to their original lot. Later, when Mr. Beetle and his helpers imprison Hoppity, they do that in the very letter Hoppity desperately had been waiting for. Moreover, when he has thus disappeared, nobody seems to go looking for him. And the finale, in which the insects climb a new skyscraper, while its being built to reach a rooftop garden in full bloom, stretches the concept of time beyond believe. Nevertheless, this finale is pretty exciting, and makes a fantastic watch. I’ve no doubt that it’s this spectacular trip that will stick into the viewer’s mind.

‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’ absolutely shows that the Fleischers were very able to make feature films. Unfortunately, they weren’t allowed to make another one. ‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’ premiere date preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor by just two days, and after the attack its general release was postponed. By the time the film got a wide screening (as ‘Hoppity Goes to Town’) in mid-1942, the Fleischers were already out of business. Paramount hardly promoted the picture, and the feature unfortunately flopped. Since Fleischer’s successor, Famous Studios, never made a feature film either, Walt Disney remained the virtual monopolist of feature length animated entertainment in America for more than forty years…

In the early 1940s America was taken by a conga craze, as is exemplified by cartoons like ‘Woody Woodpecker‘ (1941), ‘Mickey’s Birthday Party’ (1942) and ‘Juke Box Jamboree‘ (1942).Popeye’s contribution to this dance craze is ‘Kickin’ the Conga ‘Round’.

In this wartime cartoon both Popeye and Bluto are sailors ready to go the shore in some Latin American country. There Popeye has a sweetheart called ‘Olivra Oyla’ (Olive Oyl, of course, but tanned, and speaking with a fake Spanish accent). Bluto fancies her, too, and at the shore a feud ensures, with Bluto and Popeye performing magic tricks, outsmarting each other.

Popeye’s tricks are strikingly violent, but Bluto has his revenge: at the conga club it appears that Popeye can’t dance, while Bluto can, so he dances the conga with Olivra, leaving Popeye sulking at the table. Fortunately, spinach gives him the conga spirit, and soon Popeye takes over, and even clobbers Bluto to a conga beat. The animation on this short is strikingly zany, and perfectly matched to the typical conga beat.

‘Kickin’ the Conga ‘Round’ marks Bluto’s return after an eighteen months absence since ‘Fightin’ Pals‘ (1940). This short also marks his first portrayal as a navy sailor. Like Popeye, who first appeared in this uniform in ‘The Mighty Navy‘, navy white would remain his new uniform for the rest of his theatrical career. With Bluto’s return, the Popeye cartoons would more and more follow the triangular relationship between Popeye, Olive and Bluto, diverting less and less to other story ideas.

‘Nix on Hypnotricks’ starts with some Eastern hypnotist called Prof. I. Stare, who needs a human victim.

He chooses one randomly, with the use of a phone book. This random victim happens to be Olive Oyl, who he manages to hypnotize through the phone, ordering her to come to him. This turns her into a mindless zombie walking to his office. This passage leads to more or less a remake of ‘A Dream Walking’ (1934), with Olive Oyl walking on great heights, and Popeye going at great lengths in saving her. This sequence is no less than hilarious, with gags rolling in plenty. At one point we even watch the both walking absentmindedly on top of a building in construction. Spinach turns Popeye into a Superman, with S-logo and cape, in a tribute to his new fellow cartoon star (at the time of the film’s release, the Fleischers had released two Superman cartoons). However, to save Olive from the spell, Popeye has to slap her. Unfortunately, Olive immediately punishes him for doing so…

‘Nix on Hypnotricks’ is a genuine gag cartoon and shows the Fleischer studio in top form. Who would have thought the two brothers would be out of business within half a year?

As a sailor, he naturally chooses the navy. Thus, at the start of the cartoon, we find him on a training ship. However, being a navy sailor turns out to be quite different, and most of the humor comes from Popeye’s inapt ways of being a navy sailor. “Do I wants to be a sailor? I AM a sailor! I’m Popeye the sailor! I was born a sailor“, Popeye exclaims at one point. But despite his lifelong experience, Popeye’s ways of hoisting an anchor, aiming the guns and flying a dive bomber in no way convince his superior, so he’s sent to the kitchen to peel onions. Yet, when the training ship is under attack, Popeye saves the day.

‘The Mighty Navy’ was released only thirteen days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and thus the enemy is neither named nor seen in this cartoon. The enemy’s fleet flag bears ‘The Enemy (Name Your Own)’, and when Popeye disposes of its fleet, no victim can be seen. This in sharp contrast to the post-Pearl Harbor Popeye cartoons by the Famous studios: now the Japanese were clearly identified, and racial stereotypes roamed wildly. None of that in this cartoon, making it much more fun to watch.

‘The Mighty Navy’ seems to be a tribute cartoon to the navy. Apart from Popeye, all sailors look like Superman, and the navy itself isn’t ridiculed at all. Instead, the cartoon looks like a celebration of the navy’s choice to make Popeye the official insignia for its own bomber squad. In the insignia, which is presented to the character himself at the end of the cartoon, Popeye looks like his older self, but in ‘The Mighty Navy’ Popeye’s clothes have changed into navy white. I don’t think that this was meant to be a permanent change of dress. Indeed, in Popeye’s next cartoon, ‘Nix on Hypnotricks’ Popeye wears his old clothes again. Yet, in most of his following cartoons, he would be dressed in navy white, and it’s in this dress he would be seen the rest of his theatrical career.

In ‘I’ll Never Crow Again’ Olive’s garden is invaded by some cheeky crows.

Olive phones Popeye to chase the crows away. Popeye’s attempts include placing a scarecrow, and pretending to be a scarecrow himself. All his attempts fail, however, much to hilarity of Olive. In the end, Popeye gets so angry at Olive, he turns her into a scarecrow, which surprisingly works in chasing the crows away.

The crows are over-sized and they are able to talk. The pesky animals turn Popeye into the straight man, and with that some of the comedy is lost. Also, to watch an angry Popeye laying hands on Olive is quite out of character, and this gag doesn’t really work either.

In his introduction shot we watch Popeye cutting his toenails, something we hadn’t seen a cartoon character doing since Betty Boop in ‘Bimbo’s Express‘ (1931). The theme song of this cartoon is ‘It’s a Hap-Hap-Happy Day’ from ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘ (1939), which is sung by both Olive Oyl and Popeye in the opening scenes.

Apparently, Popeye owns an “air-conditioned airport”, where he works on some planes. Poopdeck Pappy drops by, begging Popeye to let him fly, which Popeye keeps refusing. When put outside, Pappy finds an idle plane, and the old man takes off immediately, flying recklessly all over the world, and crashing into Popeye’s airport again.

Surprisingly little happens in this ‘Pest Pilot’: we practically only see Pappy begging and flying. Poopdeck Pappy’s flight is mildly amusing, and in fact the short’s best gag is Popeye’s original way of making a propeller.

‘Pest Pilot’ was the last Fleischer cartoon featuring Poopdeck Pappy. Popeye’s old man would turn up in ‘Seein’ Red White ‘n Blue’ (1943), but was revived by Paramount in only eight cartoons. Poopdeck Pappy’s last three Fleischer cartoons were rather weak, but earlier ones had shown that the character certainly had comic potential, so why he was eventually shelved, we’ll never know.

This short opens with Popeye and Poopdeck Pappy playing cards (and the old man cheating a lot).

Unfortunately father and son are disturbed by a weeping Swee’Pea, and both try to nurture the baby. The two men’s methods of nurture are quite different, however, Popeye’s soft approach contrasting heavily with Poopdeck Pappy’s more outlandish methods. As soon as Popeye leaves the room, his father tests Swee’Pea’s nerves by swinging him outside the window, like a Michael Jackson avant la lettre. Next he teaches the infant how to shoot.

Despite the rather risque gags (at least to the modern viewer), ‘Child Psykolojiky’ never becomes very funny. The cartoon is hampered by its large amount of dialogue (it certainly is one of the most talkative cartoons of the era), and its moral, which throws the short back into the 1930s.

A Russian fur seller called G. Geezil draws Popeye inside his shop, but when Popeye discovers that all his bearskins are in fact, rabbit, the man proposes Popeye shoots a bear himself.

Popeye immediately sets out to do so, and corners a bear on a cliff. But when the bear calls for his family to say goodbye, Popeye breaks his gun. Suddenly the bear takes his revenge, and Popeye is only saved by his spinach, robbing the bear of his skin in a matter of seconds, only to discover it’s a G. Geezil coat, too…

The story idea of ‘Olive’s Boithday Presink’ harks all the way back to the Talkartoon ‘A Hunting We Will Go‘ (1932), and it’s just as weak. The bear’s goodbye scene is the highlight, in its perfect silent melodramatic comedy. However, there’s little else to enjoy: the shop scene feels like it was made years before, and the final battle is over before you know it.

‘Popeye Meets Rip van Winkle’ opens with Popeye passing Rip van Winkle’s home, which is emptied by some movers (one being a caricature of Chico Marx), because Van Winkle didn’t pay the rent.

Soon, Van Winkle is put outside himself, still sleeping. Popeye takes the old man home. But when he leaves the bearded fellow alone for a while, Van Winkle immediately starts sleepwalking. Incomprehensibly, the somnambulist ends with some fairy tale dwarfs bowling in the countryside. Popeye has to fight them all before he can take the old man back with him.

‘Popeye Meets Rip van Winkle’ makes very little sense, and certainly is one of the weakest Popeye cartoons ever made. The best part is when the dwarfs beat Popeye to their own size. Nevertheless, the short features some beautiful effect animation on Popeye, when he’s lit by lighting.

None of that. Instead, we have a Gabby cartoon, in which our read-headed hero volunteers to take control of the palace’s spring cleaning. Gabby soon meddles with everyone and everything, and manages to destroy a great deal, twice. In the end the other palace dwellers give him their tokens of gratitude, and clobber him with their brooms.

Compared to ‘Two for the Zoo‘ ‘Swing Cleaning’ is a much better cartoon, with its focus on Gabby’s destructive meddling. However, the short loses some screen time to unrelated gags, and one doesn’t feel for either Gabby or the other palace dwellers. In the end. Swing Cleaning’ remains a mediocre cartoon, still much rooted in the sugary 1930s era, and feeling dated when compared to contemporary cartoons from other studios.

Watch ‘Swing Cleaning’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Swing Cleaning’ is available on the Thunderbean DVD/Blu-Ray ‘Fleischer Classics featuring Gulliver’s Travels’

In a search for more lasting characters, the Fleischer studio gave Gabby, the omnipresent watchman from ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘ (1940) his own series.

In 1940 and 1941 the studio made eight Gabby cartoons. Unfortunately, the series was not a success. The problem lies with the character itself. Even in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ Gabby is hardly funny, and in ‘Two for the Zoo’, his fourth solo film, he only demonstrates that he was the most talkative character of his era, which is hardly an advertisement.

In this rather tiresome cartoon Gabby meets a porter who transports a ‘rubberneck Kango’ to the zoo inside a large crate. For unclear reasons Gabby volunteers to take the animal itself, taking a small fantasy creature out of the box, which looks like a kangaroo with a trunk and giraffe-like horns. What Gabby doesn’t realize is that he has only taken the cub, and that the mother Kango is still inside the crate. She soon follows the two, putting her cub inside her pouch. This leads to quite some confusion, and only in the end Gabby discovers that there were actually two animals all along.

Unfortunately, none of Gabby’s antics are remotely funny, and the gags are greatly hampered by Gabby’s constant jabbering. The best part is when the large Kango has the hiccups, and Gabby balances on a ladder on her head.

Watch ‘Two for the Zoo’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Two for the Zoo’ is available on the Thunderbean DVD/Blu-Ray ‘Fleischer Classics featuring Gulliver’s Travels’

In ‘Flies Ain’t Human’ Popeye tries to take a nap, but he’s bothered by some flies.

Popeye manages to blow the flies out of the window, but then one has stayed behind, giving the sailor a hard time, especially after the little insect has eaten spinach.

Like most 1941 Popeye cartoons, ‘Flies Ain’t Human’ is fast and gag rich. The turning around of the classic spinach story device is a great invention, and provides some excellent comedy, as Popeye becomes helpless against the surprisingly mighty little fly. In his final attempt to kill the tiny foe Popeye blows his own house to pieces, only to find multitudes of flies on his head in the end. The most delightful gag is when Popeye’s head gets stuck in a painting of a snowy landscape, and the fly takes some time to ski jump from his face into the painted snow.

The idea for the fly may have come from the bee troubling Donald Duck in ‘Window Cleaners‘ (1940). The cartoon itself at least looks forward to the cartoon ‘The Pink Tail Fly‘ (1965), in which a mosquito keeps the Pink Panther out of his sleep.

‘Quiet! Pleeze’ opens with Poopdeck Pappy lying with a hangover in bed.

When his son comes in to wake him, Poopdeck Pappy pretends to be ill, and Popeye goes at lengths to give his poor old dad peace and quiet, e.g. giving a crying baby across the street a bottle, and stopping workmen from blowing up a huge hill. This part is very fast, and reuses footage from various Popeye shorts, but now in a very different light. Of course, all Popeye’s actions are to no avail, as in the end he finds his dad being the life of a party.

Like ‘Problem Pappy‘, ‘Quiet! Pleeze’ is a fast and gag-rich cartoon, which belongs to Popeye’s best. It’s clear that the character of Poopdeck Pappy brought some new life into the series, giving the otherwise goody-goody Popeye something to work with.

However, it seems that with this cartoon the new formula had reached its limits, for Poopdeck Pappy’s next two cartoons, ‘Child Psykolojiky‘ and ‘Pest Pilot‘ aren’t half as good.

Watch ‘Quiet! Pleeze’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This Popeye film No. 92
To the previous Popeye film: Problem Pappy
To the next Popeye film: Olive’s Sweepstake Ticket

‘Quiet! Pleeze’ is available on the DVD set ‘Popeye the Sailor 1941-1943’

In ‘Problem Pappy’ story man Ted Pierce (of later Warner Bros. fame) reuses part of the story idea from ‘With Poopdeck Pappy‘: Popeye wants to wake his dad, only to find the bed empty.

When Popeye starts looking for his father, he finds his mischievous old dad juggling on a pole on top of a tall building. Popeye’s attempts to retrieve his pop account for some delightful comedy on dizzying heights. T

he film is simply stuffed with great gags and original images, like Popeye using lightning bolts as Tarzan would use lianas. The staging in this cartoon is absolutely wonderful, and the animators make great use of a shot of the staircase of the tall building. In all, ‘Problem Pappy’ is one of the all time best Popeye cartoons, and completely in tune with the faster comedy style of the chase cartoon era.

After reviving Poopdeck Popeye in ‘My Pop, My Pop‘ and ‘With Poopdeck Pappy‘, the Fleischers reintroduced the Jeep in ‘Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep’, despite the creature having appeared already in ‘The Jeep’ (1938).

‘Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep’ opens with a package deliverer delivering a package to Popeye. This package deliverer is clearly voiced by Pinto Colvig, and sounds exactly like Goofy.

The package contains the Jeep, which Olive has sent to Popeye, with a strange instruction to keep it outdoors to sleep. This premise leads to a great chase cartoon: for despite all Popeye’s efforts, the Jeep refuses to remain outside, and time and time again ends up in Popeye’s bed.

Now in E.C. Segar’s comic strip the Jeep had magical powers, being able to cross the 4th dimension, but the Fleischers don’t use this premise in this film. In some scenes it’s clear how the Jeep enters the house, in others they keep it wisely unknown.

With this mysterious ability to be at any given place at will the Jeep anticipates Tex Avery’s characters Cecil Turtle in …. and Droopy in …. The comedy of this cartoon certainly is of a new era, and the fun is greatly helped by the inspired score, which, like the one in ‘With Poopdeck Pappy’ makes great use of the lullaby ‘Go to Sleep, My Baby’.

Watch ‘Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep’ yourself and tell me what you think:

In this cartoon Poopdeck Pappy behaves as Popeye’s disobedient child: Popeye repeatedly tries to put him to sleep, but he sneaks out time and time again to have some fun in a nightclub downtown.

The antagonism between father and son is wonderful, and leads to lots of silly gags. With this cartoon Popeye certainly entered the chase cartoon era, as also exemplified with his next cartoon, ‘Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep‘. Like the Jeep, Poopdeck Pappy has almost magical powers to escape Popeye’s bedroom. More importantly, Poopdeck Pappy defies Popeye’s 1930s morality: in the end, it’s he who wins, leaving Popeye roped in his very own bed.

Throughout the picture, the comedy is well-timed and greatly enhanced by the inspired score, which makes excellent use of ‘Go To Sleep, My Baby’ during the bed scenes – apparently a new favorite song of composer Sammy Timberg, as it also appears in the Hunky & Spunky cartoon ‘Vitamin Hay‘ from three months earlier, and in the next Popeye cartoon, ‘Popeye presents Eugene, the Jeep’.

In ‘My Pop, My Pop’ Popeye builds a boat. Poopdeck Pappy comes along and insists on helping him, but in the end, it’s Popeye who does all the work.

Although Poopdeck Pappy had already been introduced in the Fleischer Popeye series in 1938, in ‘Goonland‘, he was shelved for two years. With ‘My Pop, My Pop’ he reentered the Popeye universe: having his own theme song, a Scottish voice, and being remarkably weak and lazy. These character traits don’t match the character in E.C. Segar’s comic strip or in ‘Goonland’, and were not repeated in his next cartoon, ‘With Poopdeck Pappy‘.

Indeed, they’re not even very funny in this cartoon, with Poopdeck Pappy remaining a rather bland character. Moreover, the whole short is rather slow moving and too rich in unfunny dialogue. The best gags are Popeye’s original ways of boat building.

Without any explanation Popeye walks through a medieval setting, where he meets William Tell.

When William Tell refuses to bow for the governor, Popeye volunteers to act as his son, so he can shoot an apple from his head. But Tell misses, and Popeye collapses. But when Tell is about to be beheaded, Popeye comes to the rescue, with help of spinach.

The story of ‘Popeye Meets William Tell’ is not really remarkable, but the cartoon is full of silly gags and anachronisms. None of it makes sense, and there’s a sense of anarchy present reminiscent of the Marx Brothers films.

The cartoon is a rather oddball entry within the Popeye series, with the designs of the other characters being more reminiscent of the inhabitants of Lilliput of ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘ (1939) than of the other characters in the Popeye universe. The short is definitely worth a watch, as it displays the large amount of creativity the Fleischer studio put into this series.

Watch ‘Popeye Meets William Tell’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Vitamin Hay’ was the very last of the Color Classics, a series that arguably already had run out of steam by 1938.

‘Vitamin Hay’ seems to have appeared almost as an afterthought, being released almost a year after the second to last Color Classic, ‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly‘. Like the previous three Color Classic cartoons it starred the boring burro duo of Hunky and Spunky.

This time Spunky refuses to eat his ‘vitamin hay’, and joins a goat in eating car parts. When he swallows a car horn he gets into trouble with some angry geese, and Hunky, once again, has to come to the rescue.

Hunky and Spunky never were remotely interesting to watch, and certainly not fit for the more adult war era, so I doubt whether anyone missed them when they were shelved. ‘Vitamin Hay’, is a fitting farewell to the donkeys, being as tiresome and as devoid of humor as the worst of their previous cartoons. Luckily, the Fleischer had a new, more daring star with ‘Superman‘. Yet he, like Popeye, had not been conceived by themselves, leaving Koko the Clown and Betty Boop the Fleischer’s only two successful creations during the long existence of their studio.

In hindsight the Fleischers’ Color Classics were a disappointing series that never fulfilled their promise. They never approached the quality of their original, Disney’s Silly Symphonies’, and most entries were ill-fated attempts at emulating the Disney style, resulting in sugary, childish and terribly unfunny cartoons. It was clear that in this series the Fleischers tried to be something they were not. This was a pity, for the contemporary Popeye series proved that they needn’t to. In the Popeye cartoons the Fleischers could stay true to themselves, producing some of the best shorts of the 1930s, including several classics, where in my opinion the Color Classics produced none, bar the very first one, the Betty Boop vehicle ‘Poor Cinderella‘ (1934).

Watch ‘Vitamin Hay’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Vitamin Hay’ is available on the DVD set ‘Somewhere in Dreamland – Max Fleischer’s Color Classics: The Definitive Collection’

Unfortunately, Spunky is soon troubled by a horsefly, who looks like a miniature winged horse and who sings the title song. The antagonism between Spunky and the horsefly, which even leads to a chase scene makes ‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ the most modern of the Hunky & Spunky cartoons, and the only one fitting the then emerging chase cartoon era. However, it’s still Hunky who has to come to the rescue, killing the horsefly and all his friends in one stroke.

Composer Sammy Timberg nicely intertwines the lullaby ‘Go to Sleep My Baby’ (which I know best as sung by Oliver Hardy in ‘Brats’ from 1930), into the soundtrack when the two donkeys are trying to sleep.

Watch ‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ is available on the DVD set ‘Somewhere in Dreamland – Max Fleischer’s Color Classics: The Definitive Collection’

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